Virgin Trains > Reviews > Virgin on the ridiculous

Author's product rating:   

Frequency of trains	Good
Reliability of trains	Occasionally on time
Comfort of trains	Comfortable
On-board facilities	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Extensive network, comfortable
Disadvantages:	Hugely overpriced, unreliable

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Sir Richard Branson is not a man who enjoys being associated with failure, and so he cannot enjoy the fact that whenever his railway company is mentioned, the mood turns swiftly to either hilarity or fury - very often a combination of the two. The fact that a man with such a record of business success behind him cannot maintain a decent train service, I think, says a great deal about the idiocies of rail privatisation, and in particular the cynical way in which the last government pushed it through for purely ideological reasons, without giving a thought to the practicalities. But it must be said that, even within the imperfect world of UK railways, Virgin is far from being a showpiece.

Virgin run an extensive network of routes throughout Britain, but the company concentrates its efforts on the longer-distance journeys, which has led Branson (misguidedly, in my view) to try to shape the business into a sort of "ground-based airline". To this end, great emphasis has been placed on airline-style gimmicks and methodology. A good example is the replacement of First Class with "Club Class" - there is almost no difference in the actual service, but it's supposed to sound more... er... "businessy". Well, yippee.

From the point of view of the ordinary, less well off, passenger, a much more noticeable change has been the increasing emphasis on advance purchase fares at the expense of normal "walk-on" tickets, so that while someone able to book 14 days in advance is now able to travel very cheaply between (for example) Manchester and London, a person who wants a more flexible fare which can be paid for on the day will find themselves paying over the odds - in some cases ridiculously so. Virgin's withdrawal of the "Supersaver" ticket a few months ago has meant increases of up to 30% in some of these flexible fares, meaning that the aforementioned Manchester-London journey now costs getting on for £100[sic] in peak time!

So, what about the trains themselves? Well, pending the introduction of the all-singing, all-dancing, "Pendolino" tilting trains (the first tilting trains on the UK network since BR's ill-fated APT), there's something of a "make do and mend" attitude evident, with a wide variety of rolling stock to be found. Partly this is because of Virgin's wide-ranging network - obviously, electric trains are not a great deal of use in areas without overhead wiring! Even so, there is considerable variation evident in the care and attention lavished (or otherwise) on the various trains - while some are immaculately turned out, it's not at all uncommon to find peeling paint, filthy windows and air conditioning that doesn't work.

If you're lucky enough to get on a train that has been properly looked after, then the carriages are pretty comfortable. The seats are mostly the older sprung type - much more comfortable than the newer airline-style seats, though the train companies don't seem to care too much about this - and very rarely suffer from broken arms or missing covers. Tables are a decent size, and the windows are large (if you can see through them, of course). Lighting is somewhat variable - those trains with poorly shielded strip lighting can be rather hard on the eyes for those trying to sleep - though that's a hard enough task anyway in a modern train, given the amount of noise from squealing brakes, far-too-loud Walkmen and the dreaded mobile phones...

...which you'll just have to put up with. There is a "Quiet Carriage" on every train, in which passengers are supposed to refrain from using their various electronic devices, but generally you'll find that your fellow travellers split into three categories, to wit:

1) The foul-mouthed yob, who plays his/her "music" at a volume high enough to wake the dead, all the while playing a humorous and intricate word game with his/her companions, the rules of which I have not yet deciphered, but seem to involve not uttering more than four consecutive words without an obscenity;

2) The braying yuppie - yes, these people still exist - who will spend the entire journey either yattering away at a volume almost high enough to drown out the aforementioned stereo about such vital topics of supreme national interest as what colour braces Lee has bought from the super new accessory shop in Islington or, perhaps worse, trying out *all* of the 150 possible Nokia ringtones advertised in his free copy of Metro;

3) The conscientious, slightly timid passenger who would like to bodily hurl the other two groups into the river just being crossed, but knows full well that even the politest request for compliance with the rules will result in a torrent of abuse in the most extreme terms. (Yes, that's right, this is where we come in.)

Let's now turn to other matters - punctuality, for example. This company is a law unto itself in this regard - I can only surmise that Sir Richard has discovered a way of manipulating the space-time continuum, which he is currently experimenting with in a surreptitious manner. No other explanation is satisfactory to explain the phenomenon of the Virgin Departure Time, by which a train can be announced as "on time" up until ten minutes after said time, but can then immediately become an hour late. Occasionally, the train is cancelled altogether, which would seem to indicate that the experiment has failed, and a rogue photon has winked the service out of existence (you can check the truth of this by asking a member of the Virgin staff - very often they will deny that the train ever existed).

Customer service on Virgin is usually very good - it has to be, given the extraordinary number of delays, diversions and cancellations. Announcing that the buffet, which was to open at Stafford, will now remain closed until Carlisle without causing a riot is a precious skill indeed, and Virgin has chosen well in its personnel here. Ticket checks are rather less frequent than they might be, and rather less rigorous too (the inspector will often barely glance at the ticket), and Tannoy announcements are sometimes less than informative (yes, we *know* the train's stopped - we want to know why!), but in general the staff remain good humoured and capable of answering passenger's queries.

A paragraph must be devoted to that Virgin speciality - the Complaint Form. These are well known to every Virgin traveller, as they are what you need to fill in to obtain compensation if the service is over an hour late. In theory, they should be available on the train, but this is often not the case, so you will spend many a happy hour in the ticket office queue behind a gentleman who wishes to plan a fourteen-stage journey around Wales, or a lady who would like to renew seven South Yorkshire Travelmasters. It is at this point that the crumpled Lichfield-Redditch timetable you have discovered in your pocket will take on a whole new interest. Sending off the form is a bit of a journey into the unknown, too - you might get some compensation, but there again you might not. It all depends. As an illustration, I recently claimed for a delayed Birmingham-Sheffield train (normal journey time: 75 minutes. Actual journey time: 165 minutes) and received the slightly less than munificent sum of £3 in Virgin travel vouchers....

As you've seen, Virgin trains have their ups and downs. At their best, they're undeniably excellent, but the combination of delays, inconsistent maintenance and, especially, the over-the-top pricing, mean that it's a brave person who ventures aboard without some kind of backup. Virgin has a lot of potential, but realising it will take a great deal more than tilting trains and 15 minutes off the journey to London.